Hell and Hell Again
by thechinskyguy
Summary: The world has forgotten of Team Rocket. Giovanni, after all, is long dead. Lance becomes suspicious of their revival, but he'll find something much more threatening...and deadly. So when Jasper Malloy leads the revitalized Rocket Empire to world domination, Lance won't be able to save the Pokemon League...he'll have to run just to save himself. (AU, prequel to Vengeance).
1. Chapter 1

_October 28__th_

A Blastoise and an Ampharos stared each other down on a wide, open battlefield. If a Hydro Pump or a Thunder Shock couldn't kill, their looks surely could. The crowd of thousands in the grandstands cheered madly, waiting tensely for one pokémon or the other to make a move. Behind the pokémon, two young men stood tall and firm, lips twitching and aching to fire off a command as buckets of sweat dripped down their foreheads.

"And the battle begins with a fizzle as our two opponents wait for the other to make a move!" the commentator announced as loudly and wildly as the cheers from the audience.

Finally, one of the trainers cracked. "Blastoise, use Rain Dance!" he cried.

A small, yet thunderous rain cloud formed and tumbled in the air above the water pokémon's head. The Blastoise roared as rain drops splattered over his body. A faint blue aura began to glow around him.

From the lowest row in the grandstands, right at eye level with the battlefield, a red-haired man nodded and grunted impressively. "That was a smart move, right there," he said.

Next to him, a giant of a man stared down at him with leering, curious eyes. "Why's tha'?"

"Simple, really," shouted the red-haired man over the raucous audience. "The kid with the Blastoise knows that he's screwed against an electric type. With a water-boosting move like Rain Dance, he'll at least have a fighting chance." He turned to the bigger man and smiled. "You should know about that, Surge."

The giant grunted and folded his arms curtly. "Being the champion never made you an all-knowing genius with type matchups."

"Never said it did," said the man with a forced chuckle. "I was just proving a point."

Surge sighed, but the roars of the crowd grew louder. The Ampharos launched a blinding Thunderbolt straight for the Blastoise and lit up the entire stadium. The water-type curled up in its shell halfway before the bolt hit it straight in the chest. Blastoise hit the ground with a _thud_ before slowly rising on its feet, much to the fervor in the grandstands.

"I'm getting' the feeling that you didn't invite me to watch the tournament to lecture me on third-grade science, Lance," Surge said, his eyes still wandering from the battlefield.

He grinned. "If I wanted to meet up for anything other than watching a battle, I would've just called you."

They both sat in nervous silence, pretending to show interest in the battle. Lance began to fidget in his seat uncomfortably to no end, and he barely noticed when the Ampharos went down in a massive tidal wave. His thumbs pricked at his hands until they broke skin. Surge sat stoically, watching an Arbok burst from a Poké Ball.

Lance threw quick looks around his shoulder. High ranking League officials and a few foreign gym leaders took up the rest of the front row of the stadium, but everyone's eyes were glued to the battle, their ears muted and shut off from the wild cheering, let alone a private conversation.

"I think Team Rocket's up to something," Lance said suddenly, throwing a quick, firm glance at Surge.

He nearly burst into laughter. "They've been dead and buried for years, Lance! Why the hell would they –"

"I think they're militarizing," said Lance. "There have been too many robberies and deals going around for comfort. Crime's never gone up so high, or so fast."

Another sigh, then more awkward silence. The battle on the field waged on as both pokémon clashed head-on in the middle, each blow sparking another wild cheer or chant in the crowd.

"You're crazy," Surge finally muttered. "There's no way that—"

"I'm going in tomorrow to investigate. Surge, I think they're planning something that we can't plan for in any way unless we infiltrate them and find out what's going on." Lance leaned close into Surge's ear, speaking in almost a low, but stern mumble.

"You mean unless _you _infiltrate them," Surge retorted. "There's no way in hell I'm risking my life because you _might_ have a hunch that something _might _happen with Team Rocket."

"I've done it before, Lieutenant. And you should be a bit more willing as a G-Men leader."

"Do you even know where the hell their base _is?_" asked Surge. "And who might be running the group? I mean, Giovanni died with Team Rocket!"

Blastoise fell to the ground unconscious, and the chants and jeers of the crowd grew unbearable. Lance had to shout into Surge's ear from just inches away. "They used to operate out of Celadon! I'm betting that they're still there under new leadership!"

Surge scoffed and shook his head. "I'm not with you on this one, sir!"

"Why the hell not? Don't you wanna figure out what they're—"

"Damnit, Lance! They're not doing shit! They're dead! And they ain't comin' back, either!"

Lance cursed under his breath and stood, pointing an accusatory finger at his partner. "As commander of the G-Men, I reserve all right to launch an investigation on _any _criminal activity, organized crime no less. I don't give a damn what you think about it, either."

Without another word, Lance started up the stairs toward the stadium's exit, ignoring Surge's pleas for him to sit his ass back down. Star-struck spectators broke their attention from the battle to beg Lance for an autograph as he walked up, but a firm wave of the hand shooed them away. He flung the door open and jogged across the concourse, hearing the crowd die down with each step he took. But as he reached the entrance to the parking lot, he could hear the crowd react once more to a fainted pokémon.

A chilly October wind blew through the dark, dreary night sky. Lance shivered as his cape billowed behind him, but his confident, composed stride maintained itself. Thoughts of Team Rocket, of infiltrating their base for the eighteenth or nineteenth time almost made him walk past his parking spot, where a cherry red motorcycle stood firmly on its kickstand.

He couldn't hear himself grumbling under the chaotic screams and cheers from the stadium. Even the engine on his motorcycle sounded like the purr of a Meowth in a raging hurricane. Lance sighed in content when he drove from the parking lot, and the smooth, rhythmic churning of the engine on the bare highway drowned everything else out.

Lance thought of his Dragonite, resting in its Poké Ball on the desk in his bedroom. Usually, he'd bring him to the matches, partly for transportation to and from the stadium and partly to get him out of the house every once in a while. But tonight, on official G-Men business, his partner had to stay behind.

Whirrings above made him look up. The sounds of a helicopter's blades whispered, but the nighttime sky was clear. Lance grunted and kept driving.

A few sparse streetlights were all that lit up the four-lane highway. The post-match traffic wouldn't hit for another half an hour, so Lance could blaze down the road as fast as he liked – but he still kept the seventy mile an hour speed limit. Behind him, his cape whistled madly in the flowing wind, a wave of red and black blending into the night.

An orange light from a_ ROAD WORK AHEAD _sign glared in Lance's eye, and he squinted a bit, almost losing his grip on the motorcycle's handlebars. Sweat began to drip down his forehead and clung to his lower chin before droplets flew onto the road and into oblivion.

The twenty-minute drive to his house from the stadium in Viridian City felt like an eternity and a half. After the fight with Surge, his warm, relaxing bed seemed light years away. His eyes began to droop, his grip on the handlebars loosened…

A bright red "R" flashed across his mind, and he jolted awake as his motorcycle cut across a lane. The nervous spasms that shot through his muscles almost made him crash into the metal railing at the side of the road. He panted and drove back to the center of the road, his hands squeezing the handlebars with moist hands.

"Shit. . ." he breathed under his breath. "I just need to get to bed."

The corner of his eyes focused on the beacon of lights that surrounded a distant power plant. Even from miles and miles away, the generators and smoke stacks still lit up like christmas trees on the horizon. Lance kept one eye focused on the lights, the other focused on the road. He zigzagged through the lane dividers and slowly sped up. The needle on his speedometer slowly crept to "75."

A few of the lights on the edge of his vision danced away. Lance thought nothing of it until more of the lights burned out. His foot pumped the brakes when the first lights that disappeared returned.

His motorcycle came to a stop, and he squinted toward the power plant. He tried to keep a mental count of the lights he could make out, but so many of them kept blinking off and on that he could barely get to ten. It looked like a tiny, distant switchboard, with all of its knobs and gears and blinking lights, although _these _lights shouldn't have been.

"The hell. . ." Lance sighed. He slowly dug for the Poké Gear in his pocket and scrolled through his contact's list, punching the listing for Lt. Surge.

"Yeah?" Surge loudly answered after four rings.

Lance held the device a foot away from his ear – the rampant, victorious cheers from Surge's end blasted through the earpiece. "Surge, it's Lance. Do you know what's going on with your plant over by Viridian?"

He could hear Surge's muffled groans of frustration. "Nothin' that I know of. Why?"

"All of the lights on the exterior are going haywire. Can you have someone check them out? I don't like the look of it." Lance never broke his gaze from the flickering lights.

"Yeah, I guess," said Surge. "But I haven't gotten any other calls from the area's operatives about any outages."

"Look into it and let me know what's going on," Lance said before clasping the Poké Gear shut. Grumbling under his breath, he shot one final glance toward the power plant. The lights' blinking seemed to have slowed to an intermittent dim.

He sped off onto the highway without looking back, even though he could feel each blinking light burning into his skull.

Five minutes later, he took the exit off the highway, and the purring of the engine slowly died as the motorcycle rolled into a dim, narrow, winding driveway. The soft whispers of the nighttime bugs around him echoed harmoniously across the air, and soon even the motorcycle's roar went out with a whimper under the chirps and clicks of the nocturnal. A light on the cycle's front guided Lance across his lengthy driveway and to his mansion.

Even in the dead of night, the white marble monster of a house gleamed in the moon's reflection. A thicket of vines sprawled across the façade, unkempt and untrimmed. Lance sighed; he'd have to hire someone to take care of that if he couldn't find the time himself.

He leapt off of his motorcycle and rolled it into the garage. The dust that clung to the walls and ceilings made him cough until his face turned blue.

His front door creaked open, and he stepped in the doorway, fumbling for the light switch. The foyer lit up majestically, making him squint against the brightness. He kicked his boots off and jogged up the wide, carpeted staircase and into his bedroom.

He fought the impulse to collapse onto his bed with eyes closed shut – sleep could wait a little longer. With a sigh, he unclasped his cape and let it drop in the open doorway. Across from him, a laptop screen shone dimly, its login page displayed. Lance opened a drawer inside his desk and picked through his six poké balls to find the one labelled "_DRAGONITE."_

The dragon pokémon emerged from its ball in a light so bright that Lance had to look away completely. Its massive body took up half of the entire bedroom, its tail resting floppily on Lance's bed.

"Hey, buddy," Lance muttered. "Go out and fly for a bit. You need a stretch."

Dragonite nodded and, after Lance opened his bedside, wall-to-wall window, flew out with its wings flapping strong. Lance grinned and turned to his closet.

Pearly white walls and linens instantly made him regret his choice of decorum; the bright whites could keep a Slakoth awake at two in the morning. He opened up his closet and fumbled without a light into the deepest recess he could reach into. His hand grabbed hold of a tightly folded bundle, and Lance knew he had what he looked for – his Team Rocket uniform.

Each time he looked at it sent a shot of dread through him. He couldn't even remember the last time he had to wear it, but that same feeling of regret greeted him like an old friend. His fingers coursed through the gray fabric methodically; he could feel the lump of the cap inside the bundle. The blood red "R" on the chest became too much to look at, and he tossed it onto a corner of his bed.

It'd be hell wearing that again, becoming one of _them_.

He fought his angst with a yawn and hopped over to his laptop, sitting down on a decrepit, leather desk chair. It creaked nastily and made him wince. For a moment, he wondered if he could build a new house if this one were to fall to the ground. Or at least a new desk chair that didn't make so much noise.

The monitor asked for Lance's login credentials after he wiggled the mouse. He keyed in:

USERNAME: luxfordelb

PASSWORD: 2d0r5g6n

His browser popped on the screen, and he clicked open his email. The nightly ritual of thumbing through each fan letter, business document, G-Men recruitment application, or any other email felt like an overdose of codeine. Lance's eyelids grew heavy after just six messages – a personal best.

As he read on, he teetered dangerously on the cusp of slumber. Only the lingering thought of Team Rocket kept him from going under . . . and he didn't even know why.

"You've done this before," he muttered to himself after clicking "Delete" on a fangirl's love-struck manifesto. "_So why do I have a bad feeling about all of this?_" he thought.

A bar on the screen flashed suddenly, and a four-tone jingle blasted through the speakers. Lance squinted and read the text: INCOMING CALL: CLAIR LUXFORDE. He smirked and clicked the green "Accept" button.

Clair's head of wavy blue hair blew up to fill the entire monitor. Her piercing indigo eyes seemed to radiate from the screen and right into Lance's nerves, as if she were actually in his bedroom, staring him down. He shivered at the thought of that.

Behind her, a Dragonair lay silkily across her bed, staring intently at the camera. Both he and Clair grinned slyly. "It's been a while, Lance!"

Lance chuckled mid-yawn and rubbed the back of his head. "I've been busy," he said with a sigh. "You know what it's like."

"All too well." Clair raised her eyebrows and looked back at her Dragonair. "I think he's close to evolving. Should be any day, now."

Her words floated right into his ear and out the other before Lance could register that she was talking. He blinked a few times and frowned. "Whuzzat?" he asked.

Clair stared at him for a few seconds. A new glimpse of anxiety flashed in her eyes, and her complexion changed in an instant. Her skin paled, her eyebrows reached all the way to Mt. Silver. "Everything okay?"

He gulped and stared down at his bloodied hands, picking at the long-dried maroon splotches. Here Clair was, Lance's one person to turn to as family, his only person that he ever opened up about anything to. And all Lance could do was sigh. Should he spill it about Team Rocket to her, when nothing may very well be happening at all?

"Yeah, I'm fine," he said with a false smile. "Just kinda tired."

Clair frowned her deep, condescending, big-cousin frown. "You sure you're not overworked? Being the champion and all can't –"

"It's Team Rocket," Lance blurted.

A tense moment of awkward silence permeated between them. He wanted to punch himself, and go through hell just to rewind time and never say what he just said. You moron, he thought!

"Are. . . are you sure?" Clair stammered.

"No. No, I'm not sure," Lance said, sighing again. "But things have been getting worse here in Kanto. Armed robberies, black market deals, raids on _armories _for god's sake!"

"So why can't it all be pinned back to Team Rocket?" asked Clair.

"Because Team Rocket collapsed over three years ago. You know that, Clair. Whatever's going on is all untraced. We have no leads, no suspects, no clues on anything at all. I think that, if these _are _the Rockets, they're working completely off the radar, unlike last time."

She nodded. "So, are you gonna try and investigate?"

"Of course I am! Why wouldn't I?" Lance argued.

"Because you're sweating right now, Lance. And my little cousin never sweats."

He brought his hand to his forehead and rubbed the moistness through his fingertips. Dammit, she was right. He hated when she was right.

"I just. . . have a really bad feeling about this," Lance sighed. "Something doesn't feel right."

"What's the worst that's gonna happen, though? You're not gonna get hurt doing it," Clair said, "you're too smart for that."

"I don't hear compliments out of you all that often."

Clair smirked. "My little cos' needs to hear them every now and again."

He laughed, and watched Dragonite's dim figure flying back to his window. "For the only family I've got, I don't think I could ask for better."

What should've been a smug quip from Clair turned into a jumble of sharp sound bites. Lance turned back to the screen and frowned at the frozen image of Clair in a half-smile, her eyes unblinking.

"Clair?" Lance said, tapping on the monitor.

Her face disappeared, and everything blinked out. The screen, the lights above him, his whole world went dark. Even the chandelier in the foyer died with an audible _pop_.

"Damnit," he whispered to himself. Dragonite appeared at the window and landed at Lance's bedside gracefully, curling himself at the end for rest. He looked around the darkened room and glanced at his trainer curiously.

Lance sighed and collapsed into bed. "No power tonight, buddy," he said. "Maybe it'll be back tomorrow."

Exhaustion overcame him before he could say good night, and under his thick, cotton covers he began to sweat once more.


	2. Chapter 2

_October 29_

Lance awoke with a pained gasp. He clutched his chest with one hand, the bed sheets with the other. His frantic puffs for air slowly dragged to a halt as he felt his red face tighten.

Dragonite turned his head. "Draa-_nite?"_

Lance stood and walked to the window. "I'm fine," he muttered. Dragonite grunted and lazily flew out the window past him.

"Ten minutes!" he called. The pokémon roared abruptly without looking back.

A few rays of early morning sunshine poked through the horizon, bleaching the otherwise pale, dark sky with purplish highlights. He could barely make out a few clouds, floating in desolate solitude. They seemed miles away, but somehow Lance felt like he was right beside them.

He sighed and turned away from the window. There was business to take care of.

The dark Rocket jumpsuit lay balled on a corner of his bed. His face shriveled in disgust as he took off his wrinkled jacket and pants. With a gulp, he found the legs in the suit and slowly slid into it. A lurching sensation crawled across his skin the father up the fabric reached his legs.

_Boom._

The sonic-boom came, echoed in his ears, then faded without a trace. He waddled over to the window while he dragged his arms through the sleeves. The same smoky grey clouds floated on, but other than that, nothing.

His hair stood up too wildly for the cap, but he'd take care of that later on. At least the gloves fit like a…well, glove.

Lance paused. The flight to Celadon would take two, maybe three hours. Dragonite could handle much longer flights, no sweat. He took a second to pocket Dragonite's empty Poké Ball.

Still, he thought, three hours in the sky was too large of a window for someone to see him in Rocket attire. _That _wouldn't be a pretty scandal. After buckling the bulky dark belt onto his waist, he raided the closet for another black shirt to cover the insignia. A red leather jacket slipped off a hanger and landed at his feet. He slipped that on, too; October skies weren't the warmest.

It had to be at least eight in the morning, according to Lance's internal clock. The alarm at his bedside displayed a blank screen from the power outage. If he left in the next fifteen minutes, then maybe –

_Boom. Boom._

_"It's gotta be Dragonite outside again,"_ he told himself. He crawled under his bed and found his canvas knapsack. The worn khaki shell wouldn't blend in once he reached their headquarters, so he'd have to ditch it somewhere. Which meant packing lightly.

His pile of wrinkled clothes lay at the end of his bed, his cape right in the doorway. He made a sloppy attempt to fold the bundle together before shoving it all into his sack, along with the Rocket cap, and slung it over his shoulder. A sudden fourth sonic-boom dragged him back to the window.

The sky brightened, but not in the usual shades of pink and orange. Gray blots drove the lonely clouds away from the air, lingering…and growing.

These clouds weren't stormy grey, Lance realized. More like fiery grey.

That's when the barrage of planes flew overhead.

He ran from his bedroom and down his massive staircase, skipping every other stair. The knapsack bounced on his back wildly, the Poké Ball in his pocket jangling. Even from downstairs, he could almost feel the smoke settling in his hair. He slipped on the landing and stumbled for his back door.

His mansion overlooked the skyline of Viridian City, and just beyond that the Pokémon League building. On calm, cool mornings he would sit on his rear patio and watch the cars speed across town. Sometimes, he could even make out individual ants of people taking their daytime stroll.

Now, he could only see walls of smoke and fire. A plane formation eclipsed him now to form a ring around all of Viridian.

"Holy. . ." Lance breathed. His legs froze and rooted to the ground while he watched the city ablaze.

And then the missiles started flying.

His heart pounded harder and faster than his feet could carry him. Each flying footstep into his foyer felt like a small tremor though his body, as if those missiles were striking _him_.

He slipped his orange-striped combat boots on in a flash and ran toward the front door. His hand grasped the doorknob when he gasped and slapped a hand to his pocket.

"Shit," he breathed. He ran back up the stairs to his bedroom amidst a new flurry of helicopter blades chopping the air. _"Too loud,"_ he thought. "_Too close."_

He burst through his bedroom and grabbed for his motorcycle keys from his desk. Clutching them tightly, he pocketed them and began to bolt.

A waterfall of glass poured over him suddenly. Flashes of light flooded in from the newly broken window, and the first gunshots rang out. He threw his arms over his head and fell face-down to the ground. Bits of drywall fell like snowflakes.

With a grunt, he shakily crawled through the doorway, wiping the loose shrapnel and debris off his body. Smoke and dust clogged his lungs and eyes. He heard the gunshots grow louder, fly farther through his window. A bullet lodged into the ceiling right above Lance's head, and he leapt to his feet and ran.

The low _thump_ made him turn again. A dark pellet the size of a pear rolled chunkily down the hall, right toward his feet. . .

He ran for the foyer staircase and only made it down four steps. The grenade blast carried him the rest of the way.

The tiled floor greeted him coldly as he landed and slid on his side. He rose to his feet, his eyes squinting through the smoke. His knapsack had lost a strap and hung clunkily over one shoulder.

His motorcycle keys poked through his burning pocket. The glinting metal sparked some kind of thought in his head, but he couldn't decipher it. He had these keys, but. . . but for what. . .?

Low, rolling thunder pounded like a drum right outside the front door. His mind began to clear, his feet starting a crazed shuffle. A wooden plank snapped from the door, and he saw through the hole a stone battering ram, bearing on the entrance. Four men behind it wore dark suits, with a shade of red on the chest. . .

He dived across the foyer and through the door into his garage. The aching pain from the impact felt miniscule; the fear driving him felt much, much worse. The sickening crunch of the front door collapsing dropped another head weight into his stomach. He heard the cries of "Come out with your hands up!" and "We know you're here, Luxforde!" and froze.

On the wall, right next to the open garage door, a green light blinked on and off. He gauged the distance from the shouts to the door. Sixty feet, he decided, maybe seventy at best. That'd give him about six seconds to rev his motorcycle and open the garage door, much less drive out of sight, before they came barging in.

His mind stood at an impasse of fight or flight. These grunts had guns, powerful ones at that. He reached into his pocket and cursed; all of his pokémon were still upstairs, and all he had was Dragonite's empty Poké Ball.

He sighed and jammed the keys into the ignition. _"Do or die."_

The churning engine drowned out the grunts' footsteps from the foyer. Lance gritted his teeth and slammed on the blinking green button on the wall. A cable pulled the metal garage door up against the ceiling, and wispy sunlight shone in from the widening slit.

Lance mounted his bike and wheeled it toward the inside door. "Three…" he muttered.

"Two…" he placed his feet on the brake pedals.

"One…" he gripped the clutch and flew forward. Rubber grinding against asphalt pummeled more smoke into the air. Lance's eyes blistered, but he crashed into the half-standing door with eyes wide open.

The wheels thumped and ground against flailing flesh and bone. Fine particles of wood and dust shot every which way. He gripped the handlebars tightly with sweaty palms, squinting, eyeing the intruders in his home in a split second.

A grunt on his left hit the deck to avoid the brass doorknob launching at his chest. He landed funny on his stomach, and his outstretched hands broke his fall as an assault rifle clattered across the floor. A second man stood in the path of Lance's bike, his eyes bugged out of his sockets like a Deerling in headlights. His face hardened, frowned, and he raised his rifle to eye level.

Lance swung the handle bars hard to the right, his body leaning sharply backwards. The wheels hovered for a split second before landing at a crooked angle, and the grunt fell over the motorcycle as it crashed into the ornate wall behind him.

A splash of warm blood hit Lance's face. It didn't taste like his.

He stood and lugged his bike onto its wheels before mounting it again. The other grunt dove for his gun, which lay right in front of the gaping foyer entrance. The motorcycle sped towards the outside and barely faltered as the wheels snapped the rifle in two.

The driveway under him churned with bits of glass and wood until the surrounding trees hid his mansion from view. Leaves danced in the air under the chopping of the distant helicopter blades. Lance panted and sped on, struggling to find rhythm in his breath. Dealing with Team Rocket? No sweat. But this. . .

Ahead of him, the road forked between the main road and a smaller dirt path. His hands twitched to the left for the secluded shortcut. If he could shave two minutes off the trip to Viridian, then—

A huge gray truck rammed into his path and jerked to a stop. Lance squeezed the brake until his knuckles nearly burst. He swerved to the road's shoulder and caught the Rocket insignia on the vehicle's side.

He leapt off of the bike and into the woods before the motorcycle crashed into the truck. His impact into the hard-packed dirt knocked the wind out of his lungs, sparking a spasmed wheeze.

The guns cocked, and he froze.

"Safeties off!" someone shouted. "Aim for the legs and hips. We want 'im alive!"

He backed up against a tree and snuck his head out from behind a branch. A large mass of grunts held rifles and pistols in their hands or across their shoulders. Persians and Raticates stalked the edge of the forest, teeth bared, eyes scanning, noses perched and twitching.

Lance sighed and lay down again. If he could go unseen until the mob passed him up, then maybe he could break for his bike before they noticed. Or try climbing and hope they didn't look up.

"Arceus help me," he muttered. The lower half of his body felt weightless, detached with each passing moment. A dozen men or more, all with guns, against a pokémon-less trainer. That match would be a no-brainer.

A crash of metal and flesh boomed. The grunts looked behind them with guns raised and eyes widened. A roar pierced the air before an energy wave blew every grunt backwards twenty feet.

The grunts and their pokémon flew over him, landing harder than he had. He sprinted for his bike, lodged against a tree trunk, before he saw a blob of orange perched on a mangled, twisted hunk of steel.

"Dragonite!" Lance cried, climbing onto his back. "Fly us out of here, low and quick!"

The pokémon growled and leaped into the air, shooting off like a rocket across the road. Lance clung to Dragonite's shoulders, watching the trees and branches whiz by in a beige blur.

"Fly us through Viridian!" he shouted. "We have to get to the League building!"

Dragonite nodded and pushed even harder. His wings didn't flap, they shuttered as quick as a Flygon's. The putrid odor of smoke flashed by in small whiffs, but it still seared through their nasal tracks. Lance held his breath to keep from inhaling the fumes.

The autumnal foliage morphed into a charcoal block, and soon the skyscrapers of Viridian City towered over him. He didn't look up at the battalion of helicopters that flew and landed around him. He didn't look up at the columns of fire and smoke and ash that rained down on the city.

He looked straight ahead on the main road and saw the distant League building glimmer in the fiery morning sunlight. He'd have to fly though the chaos on the ground to get to it.

Dragonite flew low to the ground, a few feet at most. He eventually skidded to a halt in the middle of an intersection, ducking to avoid a flying Twineedle from impaling him. Lance rolled off and lay in a prone position, sweeping his head around in a quick, swift motion.

A wall of thick black smoke to his left made it impossible to see fifty feet ahead. On his right, a black tank lurched down the road, a dark-clad gunman manning the top hatch. In front and behind, nothing but fire. Screaming and running. The occasional smoke trail from a helicopter's missile.

"Take care of that tank!" Lance ordered Dragonite. The pokémon began to charge a Hyper Beam and flew high in the air. The tank's long, slender turret aimed upwards, clunking into place just as the blinding beam of energy blasted it to bits.

He wiped the drying blood from his face. The entangling web of people and wild pokémon scurrying this way and that threw him into a dizzying trance. He lost sight of the smoldering tank, and of Dragonite. Everything became a blur of gray and black and early morning pink.

A truck's tires screeched behind him. He whipped around and dove out of sight at the Rocket truck just feet in front of him. He hid behind an overturned convertible, shaking, listening to bullets and thumps of bodies on the pavement.

He patted his pockets again. No pokémon, just Dragonite, off fighting somewhere. Just him and himself alone. He felt bare, naked without protection. For once, he could feel genuine fear lurch into his stomach… for once, he felt inferior.

The thickening smoke grew too nauseating, and he struggled to stand. "Screw it," he muttered, stumbling away blindly with blistering eyes. He felt around for something, anything, to support him. His back slammed against a blistering hot mailbox as a sharp, jabbing elbow dug into his chest.

Through blinded eyes, he barely made out a dark silhouette, arms raised, knuckles clenched. He threw an unfocused punch at the man, connecting with his neck. The man stumbled back, hitting the pavement with jarred, stunned movements. Lance pushed himself to his feet and ran in the opposite direction.

Dozens upon dozens of grunts, lined up in rows ten deep, paraded down the streets where artillery fire hadn't already demolished them. Clad in grey, they marched with pristine uniformity, their guns firing with the disorder they brought. He couldn't count the trainers and bystanders and pokémon running, or falling, or cowering under flaming wreckage. He could only watch from blocks away.

This was no longer about offense, or protection. This was no longer about making it to the League building. Now, it was about damage control. And Lance was losing.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Dragonite flying down at him. He whistled at him as he jogged to the side of the road, kneeling on the sidewalk beside an Onix. Its body lay unmoving, cold.

Dragonite swooped in for Lance and scooped him with one swift motion. A bullet shot by Lance's leg, missing by an inch.

"Fly back a quarter mile!" He stifled a violent cough. "We have to block the road and save as much of the city as we can!"

The pokémon nodded and flew even higher until the smoke clouds hid them from the ground forces. They could breathe a little more freely, but the charred smoke still wafted about. He blinked away the stinging in his eyes, panting.

Dragonite landed in front of a car stopped at a red light. The driver exited and shouted at Lance as the light turned green. Behind him, a teenager on a moped began to honk.

Lance ignored them, staring off at the road ahead. The front line of tanks lay far off, but they grew slowly along the horizon. They'd be on him again in five minutes, ten if he was lucky. And in a crowded, populated business district, no less.

He dismounted Dragonite and approached the man. "I'm gonna need your car," he said casually, as if he were only borrowing a pen.

"Are you fucking crazy?" the man shouted.

A loud explosion answered for Lance. The man bolted from his car without another word.

The passersby began to stop and stare down the road at the growing army lurching toward them. More gunfire popped, and pandemonium burst.

Screaming, crying, shouting, running. Lots of running, none of it organized. Lance fought just to reach the sidewalks bordering the streets. He wondered what was worse, the gunfire or the earth-shattering footsteps or the sound of shattering glass from the windows—

Dragonite's roar bellowed suddenly, making the entire city block and the air around it halt. A split second of ghostly silence ousted even the intensifying artillery fire.

"Everyone, listen up!" Lance shouted. All eyes were on him – the first sight of the Kanto champion demanded authority from anyone who would listen. Even the crying children hushed for him.

"Those who are unfit for physical combat or do not have any pokémon need to find shelter immediately! Anyone else who can help fend off the attack, please stay!"

A horde of mothers and toddlers stampeded away from the oncoming mass of soldiers. The rest, mostly teenagers and able-bodied men, stood at the intersection, staring with alarm at their enemies. A few of the younger ones looked ready to cry.

"Those with pokémon, call them out now," Lance called. "We have to build some kind of a barricade against those guys and keep them away from this part of the city. We've still got the Pokémon Center a block down that way," he pointed to his left, "and there's a good number of us."

As he spoke, a couple dozen pokémon emerged from blinding flashes of light that deterred all but Lance. Most were of decent size – a Wartortle, a Pidgeot, the occasional Machoke. Others were downright puny – Caterpies and Rattatas scurried around frantically, chasing each other. But a few Onixes and Arcanines made up for the runts.

He pointed at the intersection in front of him. "We're gonna build our main point of defense here. Those without pokémon should find anything they can to build this up. All the others should ready their pokémon for battle!"

Dragonite grunted and threw the abandoned car into the center of the road. The pokémon started ripping lamp posts from their foundations and throwing them into the pile. Some of the smaller ones leaped in front of the rising barricade, launching pellets of ice and fire at the oncoming army. With all of them combined, Lance felt like he was boiling inside an ice cube.

The trainers all moved without much chatter. Some raided the buildings to throw furniture from windows, others moved farther back to warn the other towngoers. One of them whipped a pistol from their backpack and fought his way to the front of the pack.

The bigger rock-types lobbed chunks of stone and earth into the grunts. Lance squinted and could make out individual numbers of them – hundreds, far too many for them to take on.

And then the gunfire turned from sharp, distant clicks to deafening, whizzing blurs. Lance ducked and crawled behind the barricade to avoid the pounding bullets from downing him.

"Keep going!" he shouted. "Build it higher!"

The pandemonium crazed on. Anyone that might've been in earshot of him fell in a cloud of crimson haze. A blood-stained Jolteon stumbled around blindly, limping off a torn paw before falling at Lance's heels.

A bloodied, smoking pistol clattered to the pavement, and two seconds later a frail body landed next to it with a harrowing crack. The boy with the pistol, the one that ran up to the front lines just seconds before, lay dead not two feet from Lance.

He saw in that boy's glazed expression more than just speckles of blue and green, or a dimming black hole. He saw a recognition of the inevitable, of the world forever changed. And now, Lance realized what that boy had seen before the bullet drilled through his chest.

This was war.

Lance growled and leapt for the pistol. This boy would not die for Team Rocket. Nor would anyone else. He seethed through his lie and climbed to the top of the barricade.

His growls turned to a near scream, and he raised the gun without aim. He couldn't even see the army of Rockets anymore. They must've been directly below him, or on top of him. He didn't know, or care.

He thought his finger clenched the trigger. Maybe the safety was on the whole time, or maybe it had jammed. But he couldn't successfully fire before a bulldozer of weight pinned him to the surface of the barricade. A beefy, veined hand slapped the gun from his grip.

"What the hell?" a voice shouted. "Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

Lance painstakingly blinked away the ash and dust and looked up. "Surge? What are you doing?"

Surge pushed him away from the barricade and whistled in Dragonite's direction. "You have to get your ass outta here! They'll kill you if you don't—"

And then the world just ended.

The explosion sent both of them flying backward, their limbs tossing and turning in tandem with their bodies. Lance didn't feel the fire brush against his body, or the pelting debris. He blacked out before he hit the ground.

* * *

His vision returned an eon later in a bright pink fuzz, and he could barely make out the fiery sunrise collide with his burning city. It grew smaller as something carried him up and up and up.

The mounting, growing weight on his shoulders crushed him back into unconsciousness.


	3. Chapter 3

_October 29__th_

Lance had pondered, during many sleepless nights, what it would be like to die. If terminal disease and a bullet to the head both felt like falling asleep. He woke in the middle of the wooded wasteland too easily for that. He thought that, when one woke from death, everything would be white. White like the first snowfall at Christmas time, or an Absol's fur. But waking up amidst limp, rotting trees felt too sudden. _Nothing _like he imagined.

He groaned and sat up against a wide tree trunk, cradling his head in his lap. His eyesight wavered through blurs and red spots, and even what he _could _see he couldn't quite decipher. Everything seemed still, but the splotches of light against decaying leaves made him shield his eyes. A pair of icy hands ran down his spine, grasping him with trickly beads of chill. Lance's teeth chattered as he wrapped his arms around his lower torso.

And then the lingering scent of noxious smoke keeled him over once more, forcing him onto his side on a frozen bed of dirt and shriveled twigs. Vomit boiled, rising in his throat; he had to fight and swallow it down with a grimace to keep from retching. All that emerged was a painful cough, stifling his already worn body. A flurry of senses bombarded him all at once, and his sense of life, of being risen from the dead, struck him like a mallet strikes a gong: on-point and without mercy.

He couldn't remember if he saw the girl first or if the girl saw him. He could only remember her fixed marble expression of shock and fright and disgust melted together. His own face probably mirrored it.

The girl screamed, backing up in fright and pointing at his chest with a trembling finger. "Y-y-y-you were dead!"

Lance shushed her, stumbling to his feet in a hazy stupor. "Someone's gonna hear you!" he hissed.

Her back bumped into a wide tree, and she halted. That mix of emotions in her eyes faded into childish confusion. "How'd we get here?" she whispered.

One good look at the girl's complexion told Lance that she wasn't older than thirteen, fourteen at most. Against the rugged, jagged terrain of the forest, she and her plain yellow dress stuck out like a fish drowning in sand.

He looked up at the wide pillars of trees that enveloped them both. Even with Lance's neck angled straight up at the sky, the highest tree canopies hid from his sight.

"I think my Dragonite brought us here," Lance said. He remembered blacking out over Viridian as Dragonite carried him over the demolished city. "Is this…?"

"Viridian Forest, yes," said the girl. "I still don't get how –"

"Now's not the time for that," Lance said, making a grab for his backpack. He drew two fingers to his mouth and blew a high, brief whistle, jagging across the wind like a dagger.

"But where did you even come from?" she cried. "I was in town when it all happened and the next thing I know, someone's shooting at me and…and…"

A huge gust of wind blazed by suddenly, bringing with it a rustling thunderstorm of falling leaves. Dragonite landed with a _thud _between Lance and the girl, sending her into another screaming fit.

"It's okay!" Lance urged, rushing over to her side. "He's mine; he's friendly and won't hurt you."

But her anxious wheezing told him otherwise. Lance clasped a hand to her shoulder, brushing away a leaf, and lowered his voice. "Hey, shh…what's your name, huh?"

The girl looked at him with scared, suspicious eyes before breathing herself back to calmness. "Y-Yellow. My name's Yellow."

Lance had to admit that smiling for her, in that moment, was one of the hardest things he'd ever done, and even then it was only a slight, toothless grin. But he grinned for her in a crisp, false movement. "You'll be okay, Yellow. I'm Lance."

He didn't wait for a response before emptying out his backpack onto the ground. His bundle of clothing, a pocket blade the length of his pink finger, and a spare wallet tumbled into the hardened dirt.

"Damnit," he muttered, sifting through the contents,hoping for anything useful that might be hidden under the clothes. But he came up with nothing but three dollars total in his wallet, mostly in change, along with an ages-old credit card. His hands balled his cape and threw it far, far behind him.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Yellow stare at him with newfound recognition. "Wait a minute… you're _that _Lance?"

"Yeah," he said without looking up. He palmed all of the change and shoved it into his pocket. "See what's useful in there, can you? And maybe find us some water." He stood and began to mount Dragonite. "I'm off to Viridian to scope things out. See what conditions are like."

Yellow's breathing began to quicken again. "You're leaving me here?! But what if something happens? What if those guys –"

"Stay out of sight, then," Lance said. Dragonite kicked off and rose into the air. "I'll be back in an hour or two."

Dragonite carried him off, high above the trees and into the sky, softly fading into orange. The sun blazed behind him as they flew, beginning to set off to the west.

"Almost sunset," Lance said to himself. "I must've been knocked out all day."

The dragon-type snorted as he descended closer to the trees.

"Did you bring that girl with us out of Viridian?" Lance asked suddenly.

Dragonite growled in response and flew even lower. The cracked Viridian skyline began to appear on the horizon.

Lance sighed, keeping his gaze trained on Viridian. "You know how hard it's gonna be. Taking care of her."

There was no response.

A misty silence carried them through the rest of the flight. When the dusk-time chill crept on them again, like a childhood monster tends to do in the night, they landed and waited for the remaining lights of Viridian to shine.

Lance checked his clothing before venturing on foot. Nearly the entire right sleeve on his leather jacket was burned and torn away. Probably from the blast that knocked him out in Viridian, he realized. But the sleeve of the Rocket jumpsuit underneath still held, even with a few tears along the upper arm. The pants were nearly in tatters on the same side, but it'd be so dark no one would be able to tell.

At least, that's what Lance _hoped._ He discarded the jacket under a bush and kept walking.

They had almost no light to travel by when they reached the edge of Viridian Forest. The buildings of Viridian City, broken and fallen as they were, lay practically an arm's reach away. He glared down the few brightening street lamps, watching Rocket grunts stride by with straightened backs and palmed guns.

Scores of Crobat and Skarmory patrolled the skies, a grunt perched on each flying-type. The occasional supersonic screech would interrupt the guns' reports. On the ground, the sporadic psychic types sniffed the ground, exerting invisible aura waves toward everyone around them.

For every grunt, there were at least three civilians. Running with bags full of looted goods, cowering under the barrel of a gun, lined up against a wall with arms on high, or lying in heaps against fragments of brick walls or fences – they were splayed out like a toxic spill that reeked to the grunts of resistance.

Even the dead and dying made them turn their noses.

Lance was used to blood. The smell of it, lingering and…chilling. When he'd shed his own in the past, from a paper cut to the battle scars still imprinted in his flesh, the smell would become less and less troubling each time. Blood, to Lance, was the fifth element among the earth he walked, the water he drank, the air he inhaled, and the fire he feared.

Tasting the grunt's blood this morning, in his own mansion, and seeing the blood spilt across the streets of Viridian slapped Lance in the face. The stannic taste coated his tongue, constricted his throat, tensed every muscle in his body and rooted him to the ground.

Dragonite had to nudge him lightly to bring Lance to awareness. He nodded and stood, shoving any remaining tufts of his burnt red hair into his hat.

"I'll have you stay here," Lance breathed. "Having you by my side in all of _that _would look too suspicious."

The pokémon grunted in a low whimper, kicking a foot into the ground.

"You know I won't be gone long. Once I find a way to either contact the G-Men base or find someone that can help us, I'll come back."

He paused, looking again toward Viridian. A trio of gunshots broke into the air, echoing and fading like the lives that went with them.

"If I'm not back by morning," Lance said, after the chill down his spine mellowed over, "find Yellow and make sure she's safe. She's expecting us."

Lance lurked, crouching, from the outside edge of the forest. The protective barrier of leaves and foliage seemed to close behind him as nothing separated him from the city limits. He stood in a short strip of mowed fields, the first city streets just meters away. Individual features on the grunts – mouths, hands, eyes – lit up the night like fireflies.

His pace slugged before he picked up to a jog. Even then, his footsteps were narrow, fleeting, barely brushing the ground to keep rustling to a minimum. Coupled with Lance's dark Rocket uniform against the pitch-black night, he felt almost invisible.

An alley greeted him when the ground changed from grass to asphalt. He ducked behind a dumpster, sucking in the thin, polluted air, and fingered the change in his pocket. Three quarters, a dozen or so dimes, and maybe five or six nickels.

"Might have to go hungry for a bit," he said to himself. He didn't bother thinking about using the old credit card in his spare wallet – even if it worked, he'd leave a digital footprint for all of Team Rocket to follow. He'd be dead by morning.

Adjusting his cap one last time, he stepped from the alley and paced himself briskly, staring straight ahead, eyes unblinking. A gulp escaped his throat, a bead of sweat daring to speak across his forehead. His eyes forced themselves down at the pavement to keep them from darting toward another grunt.

"_Get yourself together,"_ he thought. _"You've been undercover before. This isn't anything new._"

To his right, an Espeon at the end of a grunt's wire leash began to stare at him. He veered off onto another street, straining his forehead to keep sweat from flowing. _"They can't sniff me out like this. If they uncover me now, there's –"_

He wouldn't let himself finish that thought.

A burst of dry static blared. Lance looked up and saw a projection screen hanging scrappily over Viridian City Hall, the shadowed silhouettes of construction cranes partially obstructing the view of a stone-faced gentleman with skin as pale as the moon. A thin, rounded head adorned with crew-cut platinum hair gazed down at the city, with a growing smirk of victory painting his cheeks.

Around him, beaten civilians and hoarse-voiced grunts alike stopped in their tracks. Hundreds of necks craned towards the screen, beholding the man for the first time.

"People of Kanto," his voice boomed. The calm authority he asserted made even Lance check his posture. An ice cube may as well have run down his spine.

"As you've undoubtedly noticed," he said, "the Kanto region has undergone some…management overhauls. A new age of prosperity is about to unfold for all!"

Lance looked from the projection and observed the crowd. Mouths everywhere twitched in anger, or joy. The grunts wanted to woop and holler while the Viridianites looked on, close to tears. Still, the hushed silence rang louder than any protest would.

The man continued. "My name is Jasper Malloy. With the ushering in of your new Rocket Empire, we pledge to provide the citizens of Kanto with a prosperous age of advancement…"

Glass shattering across concrete drowned out the rest of Jasper's proclamation of conquest. His booming words, the crowd's violent silence, it all fell to the glass that broke and spread in waves of razor-thin shards. It might've been feet or meters or light years away, but to Lance it sounded close enough to his ears to make him duck.

And then the pandemonium started, growing from a shuffle in the masses to a stampede in seconds. The shattering glass morphed with the popping bullets. A brick the size of a loaf of bread split a grunt's head in two, bursting into a bloody clump.

Lance wanted to say that running from the scene, sprinting without so much as looking back, was purely on instinct. But even before, when bullets flew inches past his head, he would've run toward the gunmen.

Not tonight. Lance ran far, far away from the guns pointed away from him. Even as a "Rocket," he still ducked into a small storefront as the gunfire seemed to follow him.

A gloved hand grabbed him by the shoulder and stood him up. "The hell is going on out there?" a voice asked.

The "R" on the man's chest nearly sent him running again. Every muscle in Lance's legs twitched with a frenzied anticipation, but his arms clung to a metal shelf, feigning exhaustion.

"The people out there aren't happy," he breathed. A few puffs of breath, for added effect.

"No shit," the grunt said.

Lance noticed the assault rifle laying across a counter, its tip still smoking. "Some woman yanked my gun from me," he said. "Nearly killed me, too…"

The grunt said nothing, jogging away to another aisle.

A couple of civilians, their clothes nearly ripped and burned from their bodies, stumbled from an aisle, leaning against each other. One with blonde hair nearly lay unconscious against a male.

"Psst!" Lance hissed. The man caught his gaze and stood in fright, clutching the woman with vice-grip fists.

"You need to get out of here!" he said to the man. The woman in his arms stirred weakly, falling further to the floor.

"Babe, we're gonna be –" the man began. They both fell to the gunshots before he could finish.

The grunt reappeared from a farther aisle, gun raised and sights aimed. He shot a glance at Lance and chuckled. "Close one, eh?"

He could only nod silently, his legs barely keeping him standing. The grunt muttered something, wandering off once more to sweep the rest of the store.

Lance coughed, sweeping away shards of glass and bits of food, and slumped on the grimed-up tiled floor. The pool of blood flooding from the adjacent aisle seeped under his boots and began to stain the bottom of his pants. He recoiled and scooted over; the blood felt icy cold to the touch.

The grocery store hadn't lost power, but even under the ceiling lights Lance had to squint to see the bodies scattered all over. Each aisle played host to a cesspool of blood leaking from limp torsos and detached limbs. The smell of the blood, prominent before, forced Lance into a fetal position of his own vomit.

"_No,_" he thought. "_I still have to –"_

His arms and legs forced his body into a standing position. The blood threatened to drag him back to the ground, seep into his boots and pull him into the tiles like quicksand, but he persisted with one weak step after another.

He found himself at the end of the store, in a bottled juices section. To a horrifying relief, only one body lay across this aisle. A boy this time. Maybe nineteen or so. A ragged burlap knapsack, once undoubtedly slung over this boy's shoulder earlier this morning, now lay feet away from him, opened but still full to the brim.

Something new filled Lance. He was used to rational thought, sure, but this new sensation of an emptiness in his stomach, a craving mind on withdrawals, felt ravenously. . . different.

Time seemed to vanish from the moment he saw the pack to when his trembling hands sifted through its contents, almost as if he'd teleported the seventeen feet down the aisle. The steps he took to kneel at where the pack lay never really happened, as far as he knew.

Three unopened plastic water bottles, a half-dozen cereal bars, and a change of clothing far too small for Lance to fit into. That was all he found. His hands unconsciously dug through and turned out every single pocket that protruded from the knapsack, but he was met only with a handful of lint.

Lance blinked. Looked up. Looked around. Caught a half-breath in his throat. Clutched the knapsack to his chest, running from the body, running from the store, running from all of the blood that settled and sunk into his skin. The blood that he knew, but did not want to know, could not be escaped.

He stopped running after miles it seemed, or maybe only a few hundred feet. Something he didn't know. He knew that he sunk to a bench on a quieter street in town, gently slipping the sack of goodies over his shoulder, and he knew that he had to make his next move. Fast.

"_I can't hang around town without those Rockets swooping in," _he thought. "_Even undercover, it's too dangerous. But the G-Men are gonna think I'm dead if I don't try and get a hold of them. Arceus knows what else the Empire is doing to the other League members. . ."_

Two grunts to his left sat in a pavilion, one with a laptop cradled across his lap. They sat across from each other, neither one of them saying a word to each other that Lance could tell. One, much shorter and wider than the second, slumped in the plastic deck chair with his balled fist cradled on his chin.

Lance looked away and sighed. "_Two minutes. Make a move in two minutes, or you're getting out of here."_

Just as the day had begun with smoke clouds, Lance saw them fade with the reddening twilight sky. The scent of the ash, the remains of buildings and bodies burning and giving themselves to the air – still remained, free from any temporal bounds.

He didn't immediately spring for the pay phone when he saw it under the streetlamp. The handset dangled off of the frayed metal cord, but otherwise it looked intact. The plastic blue surface shone under the light of the streetlamp.

The loose change in his pocket seemed to press against his skin, almost begging for release. He remembered the three quarters he had and, without any thought, stood, jogging toward the payphone. By now, the dusky sky all but hid him in the shadows. Walking into the light shining above the phone felt illegal, like walking into a helicopter's search light with hands high in the air.

A rusted indentation next to the payphone's coin slot told Lance that one call would cost seventy-five cents in quarters only. He sighed and shuffled the three tokens in the palm of his hand. His eyes closed, his ears shut out all of the hubbub of the typical late-night rush of murder.

"_Only one phone call,"_ he thought. "_I have to get ahold of the G-Men HQ somehow. But if Clair found out what happened here, she'd kill herself with worry. I can call her and have her let someone know at HQ that I'm okay…but the G-Men might have information I need to get around, especially if this Empire thing is legit…"_

His mind played a broken record of his own thoughts – from Clair, to HQ, back to Clair, and on and on and on. He took a quick, fleeting glance at the two grunts, sitting idly still. Amidst the hell around them, they still say, focused on the laptop like nothing else existed around them.

"_Clair's all the way in Blackthorn. There's no telling what things are like there... I'm at least pretty sure that the G-Men are in fair shape. They have to be handling all of this…_"

He deposited the quarters and dialed Clair's number.

"…_right?"_

"We're sorry," a female voice said. "Interregional calls cannot be placed at this time."

"Fucking hell!" Lance hissed, slamming the phone onto its hook. He sighed and laid his head on the console, shaking with anger and terror. The urge to break the phone console into bits scared him. He'd never lashed out like that at anyone. Now wouldn't be the best time to start.

"_The hell am I supposed to do? There's far too many grunts for me to take on without any help from the G-Men or any pokémon, and even then my chances are next to none. I'm gonna get snuffed soon if I don't retreat. . ."_

With his head hanging low, Lance sauntered dejectedly away from the payphone. He looked up and saw the dim shadows of the edge of Viridian Forest, a mile's walk away. His tired feet began the trek when the chinking of quarters against metal made him freeze.

He slowly turned, staring back at the phone station. Three dented quarters – the same ones he'd deposited seconds ago – lay in the coin return slot. Lance slipped them into his palm, staring curiously, before grunting.

Thinking about which number to dial wasn't hard this time. No hope getting word to Clair, he decided. His fingers punched numbers rapidly, almost without pattern, but Lance knew the number too well to forget.

"Thank you for calling Celadon –" a female voice began. He pressed the "1" key without prompt.

"If you're inquiring –"

"1" again.

"If you're calling in regards to a faulty coupon verification code, please recite the –"

"One four four nine three," Lance whispered. "Vespiqueen override indigo delta."

The cool, feminine voice died, and a flat dial tone took its place. Lance caught one of the grunts in the pavilion eyeing him from behind his laptop, sipping lightly on a coffee thermos. The other one pretended not to stare alongside him.

The receiver clicked on. "Luxforde?" a man asked.

He breathed a sigh of flooded relief. "Listen, has HQ—"

"Been compromised?" the man said. "At the very least, we've lost a lot of very…sensitive information. They know where we are, they know who we are. They just haven't launched an offensive on our base."

A few seconds of tense, awkward silence followed. "Everyone's okay, though? And you, Algernon?"

"Bodily, yes." Algernon's voice sounded gruff, hoarse with old age. "Obviously, we're all still trying to address this crisis as it unfolds, but we only have so much to work with."

Lance sighed. "I knew something like this attack was imminent. I couldn't convince anybody that we needed to prepare for. . ." His pitch faltered and tapered off, lowering with defeat.

"This is in no way your fault, Lance!" Algernon asserted. "You cannot place blame on yourself for this. We have bigger problems to deal with."

"Right. How much of an Executive Board do we have left?"

"Not many have survived the massacres today. There's you, me, and Surge. That's all I know of. Half the League is gone, too. Lance, the Rockets are rounding up just about any name affiliated with the League, be it a gym leader, Elite Four member. . . Misty, Bruno, Blue…they're all in Rocket captivity at this point."

"Arceus," Lance breathed. "And there's nothing we can do to get them back?"

A longer pause. "The easiest way I can say this is that the government no longer has control of Kanto. This Rocket Empire took the reins of everything in the region. All the cities, major routes – we're all behind enemy lines, Lance. There's almost nothing we can do but go into hiding and plan a counter-offensive from the underground."

He groaned away from the handset before taking a breath. "What about Johto? Have they been compromised as well?"

"As of yet, no. Viridian's the western-most point the Empire has conquered. But we don't think they want to stop with –"

The line cut dead, replaced not by static or an empty tone, but harrowing silence.

"…Algernon?" Lance asked feebly.

Nothing.

He placed the phone back on the receiver, and a second later his three quarters chinked back into the return slot.

The corner of his eye caught two silhouetted figures approaching him. One had a closed laptop cradled under the arm, his other arm pocketing a small pair of headphones. The other figure reached for a sidearm cradled around his waist.

Both wore grins the size of the moon.

"_Shit."_

He pretended to fidget with the phone until the grunts stood just feet away. Their pistol, raised almost to eye level, went unseen in the corners where the street lamps could not reach, but Lance could feel its tip aiming down his head.

The men re-entered the light under the street lamp, and maybe one of them had opened his mouth. Lance thought he heard the words "arrest" and "crimes" thrown out as a pair of arms jerked his back, beginning to encircle his wrists in a pair of handcuffs.

Everything up until then felt instinctive to Lance. Like a mouse runs from the lion, he ran as well. But jerking his whole body to headbutt the grunts felt perfectly preemptive. This was not a survival instinct – it was retaliation.

One fell to the ground, his head bouncing against the pavement before falling again. He never got back up.

The grunt's gun fell at their feet as Lance grabbed the other grunt in a headlock, kneeling quietly. He had to bury the man's head into the ground for him to quiet down. The shouting would've attracted too much attention. Not that he didn't already have it.

In that moment, Lance had been fighting to reach for the gun. The next, it lay in his hands, with finger clenched and tip reeking of gunpowder. It all happened without a blink.

The grunt eventually stopped struggling.

And then he started running again, hidden only by shadows and fear.

* * *

**Hey, guys! I know it's been ages, but I hope the latest chapter made up for the wait!**

**Special thanks to my awesome betas – afftwill, PhoenixLyric, and Motherflipping Oak, for all of their help on this chapter.**

**Peace!**

**-Chinsky**


	4. Chapter 4

_Droplets of blood began to fall upon the drenched stone floor of the Dragon's Den. No more than a trickle, but to the child it felt like a waterfall larger than the one cascading behind him. He knelt to the ground, clutching his scratched knee, and had to fight back tears._

_Thundering footsteps sounded even above the roar of the waterfall. The boy looked across the murky cave, spotting the silhouette enshrouded in the shadow of a boulder. _

"_Papa!" he cried, breaking into a run but falling again on his bad knee._

_The man sighed, jogging over and kneeling beside the boy. "You know I've told you not to play in here, Lance! The Dragon's Den is strictly for training purposes!"_

_The young Lance said nothing, still clutching his knee, wiping away as much blood as he could with puddles of water laid around him._

_Gruffly, the man placed a shaky hand over the knee, hovering just centimeters above it. A faint yellow glow radiated from the palm of his hand, and slowly the blood dissipated into the air, fading like the clouds of water vapor around them._

"_You're lucky that I've still got some healing power left in my old age, ehh Lance?" the man said. He cracked a small smile before chuckling deeply._

_Lance smiled, wiping away any last droplets of blood with his sleeve. "Are my healing powers going to come someday, grandfather?"_

_A fatherly pause. The man sighed, avoiding the expectant look in Lance's eyes. "W-well," he began, "you're only six, and many healers don't even begin to show signs of their power until adulthood, if they ever do."_

"_Oh," Lance said softly. His crestfallen eyes fell down to the cave floor. Tears began to drop again, tiny in size but as powerful as the raging waterfall._

"_Listen, Lance," said the grandfather. "I know that you're upset, and maybe a little hurt, too. But when you mature into the bright young man I know you'll be, nobody will want to see you cry." He wiped away Lance's tears and stood him up, cradling him gently by the shoulders. "Even when you're bleeding."_

_The boy sniffled. "Why, papa?"_

"_A tear is almost like a wound, Lance. Crying is much, much worse than bleeding."_

* * *

_October 30__th_

Any sensation of the autumn morning that could've been felt – the sun breaking through the wispy canopy of Viridian Forest, the warm, if not distant rays of light beating and radiating on anything it could find, the thin gusts of wind that dragged the leaves across the ground, the light dusting of soot and powdered debris across the air – all registered numbly to Lance's body.

His right hand lightly cradled the pistol he'd taken from the grunt. He didn't bother inspecting it since he pulled the trigger last night – whether or not it even had any bullets left was beyond him. He had bigger issues to mull over at the moment.

The other hand lay outstretched against his leg in an attempt to suppress the nervous, unconscious twitching that surged through his muscles. Even then, every few seconds his knee jolted a few inches into the air as if a spark of electricity burst repeatedly.

Not even Dragonite's early morning wake-up yawn could break him from it. It took a drawn-out nudge from the dragon pokémon to get Lance to even blink.

"Hungry?" Lance wearily reached into the dead boy's knapsack and unwrapped one of the cereal bars, tossing it into Dragonite's outstretched arms. The bar was gone in just one bite.

Lance stretched his arms, the gun still clenched in his fist, and tried to stand. A jolt of pain in his leg made him wince, and he shrunk back down to the ground.

He reached instinctively for what felt like a blade in between his thigh and his knee, but all his fingers dug into was a small cut in his own flesh. Any fabric left from the leg of the Rocket jumpsuit clung to his leg, slightly damp with crimson.

"Shit," he muttered, breathing heavily. Had one of those grunts managed to get a hit in before they fell? He didn't even feel anything brush his leg, let alone create a cut like that. Adrenaline, maybe?

"_I wonder if I could…"_

Footsteps. Behind him, roughly twelve o'clock. His gun-wielding arm jerked with lightning-fast motion toward the sound before Lance could even begin to glance in that direction.

An ear-piercing shriek nearly made Lance pull the trigger. He would've if he hadn't recognized whose it was.

"Don't go!" Lance said. "It's me, just me. It's alright."

He dropped the gun and stood to meet Yellow, but the pain in his leg stopped him once more.

"You were supposed to come back after an hour or two!" she cried. The hair under her tattered straw hat stood up in a frazzled mess. "I thought you weren't ever going to come back!"

Lance gulped. "Things got bad in Viridian. I almost didn't make it out."

A small fuzz of yellow and brown perked up behind the girl's shoulder. She giggled and sat down under a tree adjacent from Lance.

"Is that a…"

"A Pikachu?" Yellow said. "Yeah. Her name's Chuchu."

Lance grunted and grabbed two more cereal bars from the sack. "These are the only ones I have left for you guys," he said. "We're gonna have to find more food somewhere else, so that has to last you for today."

Yellow shook her head. "Why don't you take one, then? Chuchu and I can split."

"That's not necessary," Lance said curtly. "The two of you need to fill up while you can."

She unwrapped the two pastries without a word and fed one to Chuchu. Lance, wiping the nervous sweat from his forehead, rolled up his pant leg and exposed the cut just above his knee. It couldn't have been very deep, and it certainly didn't cover more than a few inches of skin, but the jagged pain persisted. It had to have been a nick from a pocketknife, or something smaller.

With his whole body shaking, he hovered his right hand just smidgens over the wound and tensed his arm, staring intently at the small trickle of blood down his leg.

His breathing faltered before ceasing completely, the veins in his forehead bulging. If only he could get this to work, then…

Yellow looked up with worry. "Lance, are you okay?"

He nodded briefly, barely hearing her words. His fingers clenched at the knuckles, nearly grazing the wound. The blood trickle continued to inch down his leg, staining it tauntingly with a faint trace of red. His eyes wouldn't divert from his leg, focusing more on the cut itself than on the blood.

A whole minute of staring, clenching, flexing, willing, and nothing happened.

With a sigh, Lance let his arms go limp. "Healing," he muttered to Yellow. "Many members of my family are healers."

"And you're not?" Yellow asked, feeding Chuchu with another piece of the cereal bar.

He chuckled ruefully. "Every family has a runt, right?"

She shrugged and stood, wiping the blood away from his leg with her sleeve. "I mean, you _are _the Indigo League champion. Not exactly a runt in my book, if you ask me."

"Thanks," Lance grumbled. "Hey, do you still have my bag? The one that I left for you when I went off to Viridian?"

"Yeah, but there wasn't really anything in there that I could use. Though I did –"

"Listen, could you hand me my cape? I can tear some scraps off to make a bandage."

She shook her head again and ripped off a yellow scrap from the back of her own dress. "I wouldn't wanna damage that," she said. "Besides, something as silky as your cape might not absorb as much blood."

Lance chuckled, louder this time, and raised his eyebrows. "You're more resourceful than I thought," he said.

Yellow said nothing as she wrapped his wound with her makeshift bandage. He had to admit, she was right. Her dress was much coarser than anything Lance would've worn, and it stopped the bleeding in a flash.

"We're gonna have to start moving," he said, standing. Nearly all the pain from his leg vanished, and he swung his leg in the air with a bit of a smile.

"Moving?" Yellow asked, her voice tainted with unease. "What do you mean?"

A pause, then a sigh. "There's really no other way to put this. Kanto's completely under siege from Team Rocket."

Yellow and Chuchu both gasped in pipsqueak tones. "All of Kanto?" she said tremblingly.

He nodded grimly. "From what I've been told my superior, yes. We're northwest of Viridian, so we should be okay. But I don't know how long that's going to last."

Yellow's back leaned against a tree as she fought tears. "So we…we need to find shelter in Johto or something, right?"

"That's if we can make it. Team Rocket, or the Rocket Empire now, might have control of the Tohjo border. If they do, getting across becomes a lot harder. But if not, then that means some people must have already escaped Kanto."

Yellow sniffled. "That's a good thing, right?"

"Maybe. If we can get across, perfect. With Dragonite, that wouldn't take too long to get across quickly. But anyone else that's fleeing will surely tell the authorities in Johto about what's going on, if they don't know already. I don't know how the Empire can keep out resistance from any other region, but Johto is one they can quickly take over as well. They're powerful enough for that this time around." He remembered their sheer manpower and guns with a shudder.

Silence lingered between them for a moment. Leaves skipped at their feet, fighting for their attention from the danger at hand. Dragonite yawned and lay back down, staring at the shelter of trees above them.

"Do you have any family there?" Lance asked finally. "In Johto, I mean?"

She nodded. "My Uncle Wilton lives just outside of Violet Town. Normally he's fishing near Blackthorn, but I wouldn't imagine he's out this late into the year."

"Great," said Lance. "I need to get you home first before I do anything else."

"But Lance –"

"No arguments. Even if those Rockets _weren't _armed with lethal weapons, it'd still be dangerous to have you around with me for too long. I'm one of their prime targets at this point."

Another pause from Yellow, her eyes glistening with confusion and frustration. "Wh-what do you mean?"

"Again, I'm not sure if this is for real," Lance sighed, "But the Rocket Empire's rounding up all the League members. Gym leaders, the Elite Four, everyone. Even me, as the Champion. If anything, they'll want me the most out of anyone they haven't already captured."

Yellow's shuddery, anxious breath led to a few tears streaming down her cheeks. "You're telling me that –"

"No tears," Lance interrupted. "You hear me? Now's the time to be strong. I know that this is very frightening for you. Believe me when I say that it is for me, too. But we're gonna have to tough it out the next few days to get you home. Alright? Can you be strong for me? And for Uncle Wilton?"

She grunted and wiped her tears. "Yeah. I'll be fine," she said. Chuchu perched herself on Yellow's shoulder again, licking her cheek tenderly.

Lance grinned. "Don't worry about a thing. I'll never let them hurt you. I promise."

Yellow mirrored his smile and handed over his bag of belongings. "Are you gonna stay in that tattered Rocket suit or…?"

"I think I'll change, actually. The Rockets would see through this disguise in no time flat, so I guess it doesn't really matter what I'm wearing." He cradled his clothing in one arm and quickly changed behind a tree.

Yellow turned to Dragonite and raised one eyebrow. "Is he always this optimistic about whatever he does?"

Dragonite smirked and raised one shoulder, as if to say "It's part of his persona."

Lance returned a moment later, cape donned over his shoulders and the blue of his outfit faded a bit since the previous morning. "Gotta admit," he said, "I like this a lot better than the Rocket uniform."

He snapped his fingers at Dragonite. "I'm gonna have you provide aerial surveillance. Keep their flying pokémon from spotting us, if there are any." He paused, his fingers to his chin. "And stay a few hundred feet ahead of us. If anyone from the Empire saw us too close together, they'd get the wrong idea. Whistle if you spot something, okay?"

"Chu! Chu!" said Chuchu.

"Translation?" said Lance.

"She wants to know if she can go with Dragonite," Yellow said. "Keep him company."

Lance bit his lip and stared at the ground for a bit. "Yeah, I don't see why not. Two in the air will make for better defense, anyways."

Chuchu squealed and leapt onto the dragon pokémon's shoulder. Dragonite grunted and bound into the air, the duo disappearing in a rain of brown oak leaves.

The gun still lay under the tree that Lance woke up under, its barrel pointing away from him. He retrieved it and opened the barrel. Two gleaming bullets shone from the barrel, one next to the other.

"I'll have to save these, then," he said to himself. He shut the barrel, found and activated the safety lock, and stashed the gun in his belt. The firearm bulged conspicuously from his side, but it was easier than carrying it with him out in the open, or keeping it in the pack where he wouldn't have easy access to it.

Lance slung his pack over his shoulder. "It's about two or three days to Johto. Ready for the trip?"

Yellow sighed, staring off to the west. "Nope. Not at all. But I guess that doesn't matter."

He chuckled, and they began walking, their city behind them and the rest of the world to traverse in front of them.

* * *

_November 1__st_

Lance counted exactly sixty-three stars in the sky that night. He sighed, his hand pushing away the canopy of the tree they lay in for the night.

It felt like millennia ago that he'd watch thousands of them dot the threshold of nighttime with regularity. Had that really been just a few days ago?

All he had now were just sixty-three stars, to cling to and to fall asleep under. To him, it couldn't ever be enough. All the smoke in the sky and the fire in the region couldn't ever be enough for just sixty-three stars.

Below him, Yellow and Chuchu slept soundly on the biggest branch on the tree, nestled in Lance's cape for a blanket. A flash of the red silky material glistened like moonlight. Even without a pillow to rest on, their faces looked clean of any worry, or fear.

"_At least some of us are at peace," _he thought.

The millionth gust of icy wind blew through the air, and he withdrew his arms into his stomach. He bit his lip to keep his teeth from chattering until he could taste the blood on his tongue.

Just one more day, he told himself. Then, they'd hopefully be across the Tohjo border and into Johto. That'd at least be a start.

He fought the urge to reach into his pocket for an Oran Berry. It was the only thing he'd have to sustain himself for the coming day. Unless they found another berry patch, which wasn't likely given the time of year. At least they still had plenty of water.

"_What am I even gonna do, once I get her home?"_ he thought. _"Even if the Rockets have made it into Johto by that point, figuring out where they're operating from by that point is gonna be a hassle."_

Sighing, he turned off his brain and stared down at the ground. Dragonite lay at the tree's base, his eyes shut but his muscles still tensed in defense. If anything were to attack then, Dragonite would be the first awake.

The image of Clair appeared suddenly in Lance's mind. The wild head of aqua blue hair, her leering eyes of crimson – it was all there, like she physically stood just feet from him right then and there.

He clutched his head in pain, wincing. _"Does she even know what's going on right now?"_

"_Does anyone?"_

Clair vanished from his mind, replaced by anybody he knew that didn't live in Kanto.

The clan elders, in the Dragon's Den. He hadn't visited them in years – not since he became both the head of the League and an executive for the G-Men at just twenty years old.

Steven Stone, the League Champion over in Hoenn. A good friend of his, and one of the leading purveyors of military training across all of the regions.

Any of the League members in Johto, or anywhere.

Ash Ketchum.

Did any of them know what was going on? _Could _they know? How couldn't they? They had to know…right?

There had been no word of resistance from Kanto since the first invasion. Any plane of helicopter that flew beyond them since all bore the Rocket insignia.

There had been no contact between Lance and the G-Men since his phone call with Algernon. No word of counter-offensive, or even if any more of them had vanished in the attacks since.

There had been no human contact whatsoever, except for Yellow. He was all he had to fight for, since no one else could.

* * *

_November 2__nd_

Nighttime again.

Lance and Yellow knelt side-by-side beneath a bush, eyeing the monster of a river that separated them from the rocky terrain on the other side.

"That's it," breathed Yellow. "That's Johto. Right?"

Lance nodded. "I just can't tell if there's anyone on the other side, Rocket or otherwise."

Dragonite growled and lurked about behind them. Lance could feel the heat from Dragonite's rage emanating behind him.

"I don't like this either, Dragonite," Lance responded. "I mean, there hasn't been word of a Johto occupation yet, but if they weren't watching the border there'd be people crossing into safety by the hundreds."

They all remained silent, watching the horizon of shadows of trees and branches on the other side, willing for something, anything, to appear.

Nothing did.

"Are we just gonna wait here all night?" Yellow whispered.

Lance stared off again before shaking his head. "No. You're right, it's now or never."

He mounted Dragonite and extended his hand toward Yellow's reach. Chuchu climbed up with her and wriggled under her dress, shivering from the cold and anticipation.

"Both of you need to hang on as tightly as possible," said Lance. "The last thing I need is either of you falling off and breaking your neck."

Yellow nodded lightly and clung to the back of Dragonite's neck, each leg wrapped around the other.

"Gon _draaaa,_" the dragon pokémon hissed.

"You'll be fast enough for whatever's on the other side, _if _anything's there." Lance steadied himself before leaning against Yellow, locking his grip onto his pokémon. "If anything goes wrong and we get split up, we should rendezvous at Professor Elm's lab if we're not being followed. Yellow, do you know where that's at?"

She whimpered something of an affirmative response.

"Right. Dragonite, can you get over the river in one bound?"

Without a response, Dragonite took several steps back and launched into a running start for the river. Yellow's grip onto the pokémon tightened even more; Lance almost had to relieve her clenched claws once he was airborne.

"Keep going!" shouted Lance. "Once you land, make the break for New Bark Town!"

Dragonite growled in response as the moon-lit waters below them glistened in their eyes.

Time seemed to slow as they crossed the river. Lance knew better; a river that wide wouldn't have taken more than two seconds to fly over, especially with how fast Dragonite could go. The stars in the sky, growing fewer in number by the night, all hung in time, suspended by invisible strings, motionless.

And then Dragonite made landfall into Johto, and time stopped altogether.

The blinding flash of light came and went like a bolt of lightning, and still Lance saw nothing but white. He blinked, smudged his eyes, and nothing.

His words slurred; he thought he called out to Yellow, asking if she was okay, but before he knew a soft _boom _launched him off of Dragonite's back.

Yellow slipped from his embrace, and they both fell tumbling to the hard, frozen ground.

He felt twigs and rocks and debris dig into his spine as he tumbled across the ground, slowing to a halt with each _thud _his body made onto the earth.

The whiteness in his vision ebbed slowly, and he could make out the rough shapes of the trees and boulders. They were nothing more than shadows, but it was better than stumbling around blind.

"Yellow!" Lance groaned. He forced himself to his feet, steadying himself against a half-torn tree.

"Right here!" shouted a faint voice. "I'm alright!"

Lance refocused his vision, and she could make out Yellow's miniscule silhouette limping towards him. He quickly whipped his head all around – nobody else around.

"_So then what the hell attacked us?_" he thought.

"Something hit my leg," she whimpered. Lance could barely see a stream of blood dripping from just below her knee.

Dragonite's distant roar broke through the night, watered down with an audible pain.

"Come on," Lance muttered, scooping up Yellow with one arm and breaking into a sprint. "Is your pokémon alright?"

"Yeah, I think so," she said. "What's going on? Are we being att -?"

"Not sure," Lance breathed. "Might've been a trap or something. Stay close."

Yellow's arms wrapped around Lance's chest, her breathing in tune with the fast _thump-thump, thump-thump _of Lance's pounding footsteps and beating heart. The brisk November chill certainly didn't make the sprint any easier.

Another pop of light. Distant, more focused this time. Lance winced briefly, shielding Yellow from the sight, but it vanished as quickly as it came.

"_A Hyper Beam,"_ Lance realized. He ran toward Dragonite and skidded to a halt, watching as his gaze fixated on the moon.

Yellow curled up tighter against Lance, one eye gazing at the moon. They both gasped, awestruck at what they saw.

The moon, dark with red and orange, crashed in a state of free-fall toward earth, igniting what few stars were left in yet more smoke. Its tail, black as the night, swung back and forth in its own –

"_That's no moon,"_ he realized.

The ball of fire disappeared into nothing, and a second later burst into sheer explosive power just dozens of feet to their left. Flames rising above the height of the trees that hid them emanated heat far too strong even for them.

"Not good," muttered Lance. He squinted and saw the smoldering **R **blazing to molten metal.

"We need to leave!" Lance re-mounted Dragonite, his eyes refusing to unglue themselves from the wreckage. "_A helicopter? Plane?"_

Dragonite wordlessly launched back into the air, flying low and fast away from the fire, away from Kanto, away from any normalcy that may have remained in any of their lives.

* * *

**Long time no see, huh? **

**Life got in the way for a while, which is why it took so long to get this chapter out to you guys. I only recently made the push this weekend to finish Chapter Four (and by push, I mean write 3,500 of this 4,000 word chapter).**

**I still hope to finish this at some point, and maybe this time it won't take me five months per chapter!**

**Peace!**

**-Chinsky**


	5. Chapter 5

_November 3__rd_

Lance realized he'd arrived into New Bark Town about one mile after he actually crossed its borders. He mistook even the most humble buildings and houses for trees, his eyes glazing over the streetlights that replaced the all-encompassing leaves above him. Not even his feet could tell the difference between asphalt and dirt.

On his back, Yellow still laid sleeping, arms wrapped around his neck, snoring lowly from exhaustion. The blood from her leg stained the back of Lance's cape a sickly crimson, not unlike the opposite side.

"Dragonite," Lance croaked. "I know you're shot for energy, but can you make the short flight over to Elm's lab?"

From behind, Dragonite purred before reluctantly laying down for Lance to mount him.

Yellow stirred atop Lance's back, her hands stretching into the air. "We…wha…?"

"We made it into town," Lance muttered. "Elk's lab isn't –"

He fell backwards, his rear landing hard onto the concrete. Another flash of light had incapacitated him, blinding him before he could swing at any attacker. Yellow struggled to stay on her feet, nearly crumbling under Lance's weight.

"Lance!" a voice shouted. "Tell us about how you got so roughed up! Did a pokémon battle go awry?"

His vision fuzzed back into sight, and in the dim of the dark morning the aftermath of a camera's flash lingered in a glowing aura around Lance's pupils. A man in a brown suit and fedora stood over him, his eyesight and hands focused into the camera.

"Getta fuggouterf herr," Lance slurred, stumbling back onto his feet. "I'be godda –"

"Aw, come on!" the journalist pressed. "Surely a quick interview wouldn't –"

Dragonite leaned into the man's face, growling, his teeth bared and shining two inches from him. Yellow stared in awe, watching closely as she wordlessly climbed on the pokémon's back.

"Bastard," Lance muttered. Dragonite bound into the air, leaving the journalist behind in a cloud of dust.

"Are you alright?" Yellow asked, gently tapping Lance's head. "By the way you fell, I'd have thought someone set off a bomb or something."

"Yeah," he said. His gaze still fixated on the skyline below him, scanning for Elm's lab. "That's kinda what it felt like…"

The flight passed for an eternity in silence. For such a small town, flying around looking for one building felt overly tedious. Couldn't anyone recognize the solar panels on the lab's roof? Or the ivy-covered exterior?

But the sun still hadn't risen when he spotted the building, right at the edge of town. He sighed with exhausting relief and signaled for Dragonite to land.

"We can't stay for long," Lance said, nudging his pokémon toward the rear of the building. "Those Rockets are gonna invade soon, if not today. If we hadn't given away our position last night…"

He trailed off, slipping off of Dragonite's back as he landed softly amongst a patch of dead grass and weeds. The remnants of Elm's garden, dying with the long forgotten summer heat, lay strewn around dirt and the rare wilting flower.

"Please be home,_ please _be home," he whispered under his breath, rapping on the rear wooden door.

The silence rang louder than his knocks for ten, fifteen, twenty seconds. Lance gritted his teeth, staring at the doorknob whilst glancing nervously at the skies. Any minute now, the Rockets could swoop in, blitzing in like just a few days ago…

"Is he home?" Yellow asked feebly. She clutched Chuchu against her chest, stroking her cheek gently.

"Let's find out." Lance palmed the doorknob and barged through the entrance, leaving a shocked Yellow behind to prop herself against the doorway. "Dragonite, you stay outside and keep watch. Let me know if something comes up."

The pokémon nodded and flew back onto the lab's roof.

"Professor?" he shouted. "You home?"

"One sec," a groggy voice called. "Juss woke up."

Yellow scoffed and stepped in, glaring at Lance before gasping at the shelves upon shelves of Poké Balls lining the walls. The chromium orbs gleamed back at her, dozens of them perched on shelves in perfect rows.

Her eyes met a wooden staircase leading to a second floor, and a pair of pink slippers shuffled from behind a corner.

Horn-rimmed glasses and disheveled brown hair perched the head of a tall, yet scrawny figure at the top of the staircase. His arms crossed, he tapped one foot repeatedly against the top stair in disdain.

"Why in the hell are you breaking into my lab?" Elm jogged down the staircase toward Lance.

"Why in the hell is the _door _to your lab unlocked?" Lance retorted.

The professor paused mid-stride, then sighed. "Touché. But what's –"

"Johto's in danger," Lance said. Eyes roaming around the lab, he finally spotted a row of desktop machines lined with a monitor in one corner of the laboratory. "I don't know what the Empire has already done to Kanto's database infrastructure, but we need to back up yours before they come for us."

"The Emp…wha?" Elm said, scratching his head. He yawned and slugged toward a coffee brewer near his kitchen.

Lance blinked and tilted his head slightly. "The…the Kanto invasion. They're coming here next, Elm, didn't you think that would happen?"

"Would _what _happen?"

A breath of disbelief and shock caught in Lance's throat. His hands shaking, he steadied himself into a chair against the wall. "What do you know about Kanto right now?"

"You're scaring me," Elm said, approaching Lance nervously. "Everything was fine last I heard. Only thing is that I haven't been able to do my routine transfers from the Kanto lab."

"Shit," Lance breathed. His gaze returned to the computer. "How many pokémon can you backup onto a hard drive, or on some other kind of storage?"

"I, um, you mean with non-cloud storage?" Elm asked. "Not that many. I've got a few terabytes of unused hard drive space, so about two hundred. Maybe two fifty, at the maximum."

"Load up as many as possible," Lance growled. He stood again and pointed at Yellow.

"Find a backpack and fill it with as many non-perishable food items as you can," he ordered. "Soup, vegetables, anything in a can. And some bandages, for your leg."

"Just wait a minute!" Elm shouted. Lance and Yellow froze in their tracks. "Nobody is doing anything until someone tells me what the hell is going on."

He turned to Lance and shoved a finger in his chest. "I demand an explanation! You're acting like the goddamn world is ending, for Arceus' sake!"

"May as well be," said Lance. "Rocket took over Kanto days ago, and you really didn't hear?"

"No, I-I-I didn't…" Elm sputtered. "Which cities?"

"All of them. And they're coming here next. We have a few hours, at most, before they make landfall, so we need to save as much as we can before they come."

Elm stared at Lance, eyes widened, before gulping and collapsing at his work station. "I'm going to send as many pokémon as I can over to Hoenn, so that they—"

"Negative. Those transfers between labs are open-ended. Once they see that you've moved the databases into Hoenn, they'll swarm that region too."

"Damnit," Elm hissed. He looked up and saw Yellow standing at the base of the staircase, eyes boggled at the professor.

"Sweetie," he said, smiling falsely, "There are some unused backpacks upstairs you can use for food if you like. Second floor on the right!"

Yellow nodded silently and led Chuchu up the staircase.

Elm sighed. "You're putting so much on yourself," he mumbled to Lance. "Helping that girl out. And me, too, when you should be running for your life. How many other League members made it over?"

"Just me," said Lance. "Yellow and I are the only ones to cross the border without getting caught. All of Kanto is on lockdown."

The professor linked a hard drive the size of a smartphone to the desktop with a cable. "That's so strange," he said. "I spoke with Bruno just last night about some upgrades to the League building's security system. Everything—"

"Bruno?" Lance interrupted. "You said you spoke to Bruno?"

"Y-yeah," Elm said. His focus turned to the computer monitor, and his fingers began typing furiously on the keyboard.

Lance recalled Algernon's conversation from the night of the invasion. "Bruno was in Rocket captivity, last I heard. Did he say anything about that?"

"No, not that I could tell. He sounded fine, mostly talking about League affairs. He would've mentioned if something had happened, right?"

The champion paused. "Who have you spoken to from Kanto since the 29th?" he asked. "I don't mean from the League, I mean everybody."

Elm's keyboarding faltered, and he turned to Lance again. "There was Bruno last night, Professor Oak a few times here and there, Misty on Halloween, and a few of my relatives from Vermillon the day before that."

Another pause from the professor. "None of them mentioned anything about an invasion. They did sound…off, though."

"Off? Off how?"

"Not exactly robotic, but their pitches were all choppy and off-kilter. Half of those calls ended up dropping connection, too."

"…and _nobody _has mentioned anything to you about Team Rocket, or the invasion, or that something would be happening to—"

"Lance!" Yellow called. "I found a can opener up here, should I take that as well?"

"Go ahead," he called back. "Just use your best judgment. Pack anything and everything you think we might need to get to your uncle's."

"Her uncle's?" Elm said, returning to the computer. While a window on the monitor displayed files of stored pokémon moving from the computer to the hard drive, Elm typed code furiously into another, larger window.

"Near Violet Town," Lance said. "It's the only family she's told me about."

A light rainfall began to tap on the window beside Elm's study. Lance meandered to it and placed his hand on the glass, flinching slightly at its cold surface.

"And what about you? You drop her off at her uncle's place, and then where do you go?"

He gulped. "Not sure. I'll find somewhere to go into hiding. On my own, anyways. The longer I'm around her, the more danger she faces. I can't have her die with me if it comes to that."

Elm slowly shook his head, the veins in his neck tensing with anticipation. "If what you're saying is true, then nobody knows about this. The invasion, I mean. I have to be the first in the region, because I haven't heard _anything_."

"I don't think anyone was meant to," Lance said. His gaze never left the window. "They had to have been filtering out calls, impersonating people they'd captured and dropping calls when anyone came close to leaking something. They don't want anyone to know anything."

More silence festered between them. Fingers clacking against the keyboard, heavy sighs of breath, Yellow clanking cans and bottles on the second floor. Their own heartbeats, pounding and racing in synchronization, staring at screens or windows like they held the answers to the future.

"I'll check on Yellow," Lance mumbled. He jogged up every other stair to the kitchen and found her chest-deep in the refrigerator. Two backpacks full to the brim with soups and canned goods lay on the wooden kitchen table.

"Easy on the food, there," he chuckled. Yellow groaned and closed the refrigerator, an armful of even more food in jars clanking in her grip.

"I didn't know how much to pack," Yellow said sheepishly. "How long will the walk be to Uncle Wilton's house?"

"It's about six days to Violet Town, five if we stretch ourselves by walking a few hours each night as well. So I think two bags should be more than enough. And we'll have a little extra for your uncle as well."

Yellow nodded and slung one over her shoulder. The sheer weight of the bag brought her two inches closer to the ground. Lance chuckled again and removed a few cans from her bag, shoving them into his own.

"Head downstairs and wait by Elm," Lance said. "I'll meet you down in a bit. I plan on staying as long as possible before the Rockets come to help the Professor with a few things."

Yellow said nothing and obeyed.

He stood in the kitchen, alone, refreshing himself in warmth and safety. He didn't know when he'd be able to do so again, if he ever would.

Nothing like this moment, the honesty of the kitchen's silence, would ever feel more assuring to him. The silence that beckoned safety, not fear, the silence that he feared he might never hear again. Even his breathing slowed and silenced itself to bask in the sheer sound of _nothing _that swallowed him.

The silence intensified, sending chills down his spine that spread throughout his body. Something felt so beautiful about bathing in nothing, not even his own thoughts, just…being.

The bulge in his belt reminded him of the gun, and the two bullets in its chamber. The only thing he had to fight for his life with, as well as Yellow's. And everything came back.

On top of one of the kitchen counters lay a rack of knives, ranging from the size of Lance's thumb to his whole forearm. The black ivory handles gleamed against the surface of the countertop, and Lance unsheathed the smallest one from the wooden holster.

The shiny, metallic surface shone the reflection of his eyes and nose at him, and the purplish bags under his irises made him wince. The haggard face in the reflection looked so unfamiliar, so unhuman, and yet Lance didn't struggle to recognize it as his.

He sighed and slid the knife inside his boot, point facing up. It nestled the side of his ankle snugly inside his sock so that the blade didn't tear at the fabric. Inside the boot, it remained completely out of view, reachable with just two fingers. A twist of the foot would even pop it out of his boot, if it came to that.

"Doing good up there, Lance?" the professor shouted from downstairs.

"Yeah, on my way down!" He strapped the second backpack over his right shoulder, balancing the weight on his back, and met Elm at the staircase's landing.

"We need to do something about these," Lance said, pointing at all the Poké Balls on the wall. "Is there any way we can –"

"I can take there of those on my own," Elm said. His gaze never left the computer. "The two of you need to get as far away from here as you can."

"Professor, I—"

Elm stood, approaching Lance and placing his hands on the champion's shoulders. "There's nothing much they can do to me. I'll hide whatever they can, and maybe they'll kill me, but you're a _much _higher value target than I am, like you said."

He gestured toward Yellow and Chuchu. "Get them away from here. As far as you can, before they come. Alright?"

Lance slowly nodded. "Right. Thank, you, Elm. I can't thank you enough for helping us."

Elm opened his mouth to speak, but Dragonite's earsplitting roar cut him off. Even in the safety of the laboratory, it echoed and bounced off their eardrums louder than gunfire.

"Shit," Lance breathed. "Elm, we—"

The professor rushed to the window and gasped. "Get out," he hissed. "Go!"

They wasted no time on goodbyes. Lance and Yellow rushed out the back door and ran to the edge of the enveloping forest. Eyes darted to the skies, their mouths hung agape at the droves of helicopters and bombers flying overhead. Dozens, at least. Too many to count, at any rate.

Dragonite flew toward them and landed at the foot of the back door, his neck perched to the ground. Lance, Yellow, and Chuchu boarded hastily, their arms wrapped tighter than ever around the pokémon's neck, and bounded into the woods.

That's when the screaming began. Loud, shrill, female, male, adult, child, it all sent shock waves through the city and beyond, far past the woods. Not even Dragonite's lightning-speed retreat could escape the sound as the screams and the smoke began to rise above the city skyline.

Yellow clung tighter to the dragon and started to whimper. The loud whistling of the leaves and branches as they zoomed by each tree wasn't enough to drown out her moans.

"We're gonna be fine," Lance said, looking back at the shrinking New Bark Town. "We're getting out. It's alright."

He wasn't sure whether or not Yellow believed him, or if he believed himself.

They kept flying through the woods as the explosions rang out.

* * *

Lance sat against the withered tree trunk, squinting, trying and failing to discern sunset from the blazing fire that was once New Bark Town. The frosty winds the evening had ushered in did nothing to quell the plumes of smoke that darkened the already murky night. Even then, Lance still had to huddle against his own body for warmth.

Yellow, sitting opposite him, could only stare on, her face blank. In the bare reflection of the moonlight, Lance couldn't see any kind of expression on her face, except for…intent? Curiosity? He didn't know.

The screams and the mighty explosions had all died down, the rounds of helicopters and planes long gone from the skies. Only the sporadic _click _of distant gunfire and Dragonite's and Chuchu's snores broke the silence.

She breathed in wispy, shallow, broken breaths, still gazing out at the city's burning façade. Lance gulped and avoided staring at her for too long. What she'd be thinking right now was beyond him.

Then again. . . what was _he _even processing? The sight of smoke towers as large as a Groudon didn't really faze him anymore. Was this normal now? Would he wake up every morning to smoke in his eyes, or maybe a gun to his head? How closely could the Rockets follow him? _Could _they follow him, if he was fast enough?

He couldn't even imagine how a confrontation with even one grunt would play out. That first day, outside his mansion, when they swarmed his house and nearly killed him, was bad enough. Could he survive that again? Could Yellow go through something like that?

"Hey," croaked Lance. "Yellow?"

She could only look at him in recognition.

"Do you…do you understand what's going on? Why this is happening?"

Time froze, the leaves suspended in air, still for an eternity, before she slowly shook her head.

Lance sighed. "Me neither."

Only more silence could follow. Lance twiddled his thumbs, muscles jittery from anticipation. But from what?

"I hope Uncle Wilton's okay," Yellow mumbled, drawing her legs closer into her body. "Are things like this all over the region? Like they were in Kanto?"

He nodded slowly. "I can only assume so. The first chance I get, I'm gonna try and get a hold of someone from the League, or the G-Men. But if what Professor Elm said is true, about them filtering out everybody's calls and correspondence, then that might not be possible."

His throat lurched suddenly, and he burst into a fit of coughing. "The water!" he groaned through his hacking.

Yellow nodded, her hands diving into both backpacks. She frowned in concentration, digging through their contents, before the frown evolved into a look of sheer panic.

"You _did_ pack water with all that food, right?" Lance asked.

She didn't answer, hurriedly dumping the canned goods out of their pockets. "I swear I did, I-I don't –" she stammered.

All of the food fell to the ground, and she tossed the empty backpacks to the side, defeated, her head buried in her fists.

He sighed and wrung his hands together. "We can try finding some tomorrow. But we're all out of the water I had on me. That's why I thought you would've taken a few bottles from Elm's place."

"I – I didn't think of it," Yellow said, her head thumping into a tree trunk. "I'm sorry!"

Lance bit his tongue. "Shit happens," he forced, faking a chuckle. "It shouldn't be hard to find a freshwater lake, or even a small creek."

Yellow nodded and said nothing.

The coughing erupted again, this time too strong to quell with just water. Lance stepped away to collect himself away from Yellow. She could barely watch the man crumble to his knees, struggling to keep down any food remaining in his stomach. Even the pokémon woke from his reverberating hacking.

"We need to move away from here," Lance sputtered when he came back. "Even this far away from the city, the smoke is too thick. Heck, maybe we can get another hour or two of hiking in toward Uncle Wilton's place." He stared out again at the city, gazing like it was a long lost treasure that someone would still want to claim. "How's that sound?"

She nodded glumly and gulped. "Yeah, sure," she said. Standing up and gesturing for Chuchu to climb onto her shoulder, she handed one backpack to Lance and slung the other over her arm to carry.

They hiked in silence, away from the city and the smoke and the destruction, but the feeling of being in the heat of the fire never went away.

* * *

_November 4__th_

It was Will, many years ago, who had first brought up that Lance had the foresight of an Alakazam. That he could sense danger and fight it before it even appeared. Lance could only describe it as a feeling of…dread. Anticipation.

When Lance woke that morning, with that same feeling overcoming him, he leapt out of the tree they had slept in that night, landing clumsily amongst fallen branches and leaves. Grabbing for the gun in his belt, he frantically whipped it into the air, his breathing growing panicky and dry, pointing the gun at almost anything that moved.

His finger rested on the trigger, ready to fire.

The silence of the early morning finally calmed him down. Lowering the gun, he whistled toward Dragonite, sleeping in the next tree over.

"Yellow, are you up?" he called out. "We're gonna get moving again soon."

No answer.

He looked up at her branch, directly under the one he slept on, and found it barren. The cape she'd been using for a blanket drooped on either side of the branch.

"_Shit,"_ Lance thought, his grip on the gun tightening. _"Son of a…"_

Two pairs of miniscule footsteps, one leaving marks no bigger than a grape, trailed away from the tree. Lance followed it, first with careful steps, then breaking into a jog.

"Yellow!" he called out again. "Yellow!"

She answered back with a scream.


End file.
